Biography
James Timothy Turner, known as Tim Turner, is an Alabama man who founded and led the Republic for the united States of America (RuSA), a sovereign-citizen movement that claimed to be a de facto replacement for the U.S. federal government. He was arrested on September 18, 2012, in Skipperville, Alabama, and charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, passing fictitious financial instruments (a purported $300 million bond presented to the Internal Revenue Service), multiple counts of aiding others in submitting fictitious obligations, filing false IRS Form 1096 returns to impede the IRS, failure to file a personal income tax return for 2009, and perjury in a bankruptcy proceeding. Turner represented himself at trial and was convicted by a jury on all ten counts on March 22, 2013. On July 31, 2013, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama sentenced him to 18 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $26,021 in restitution and serve five years of supervised release. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction on August 15, 2014 (No. 13-13613). Turner was released in December 2024, possibly through First Step Act earned-time credits, after serving approximately 12 years. He resigned from RuSA in January 2025.
